S&P Global Ratings’ decision to downgradeSouthern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric on Monday was grimly predictable. S&P cited the huge 2017 and 2018 wildfires in Edison’s service area, the “swift deterioration” of bankruptcy-bound Pacific Gas & Electric, and what it called “insufficient regulatory protections” for investor-owned utility finances. Echoing the utilities, S&P said lawmakers should abandon the state’s inverse condemnation law, which holds a utility financially responsible if its equipment contributes to wildfires — even if the utility isn’t found negligent.

Such a bailout would be a dramatic, but lawmakers need to thoroughly vet this issue before the 2019 wildfire season. While they took steps last year to help PG&E deal with its wildfire liabilities, a new PG&E scandal has made lawmakers leery of providing new relief. It’s complicated. As S&P noted, SDG&E’s push to reduce wildfire risks has been “exceptional compared with that of its peers.” It should not be guilty by association with PG&E — or with Edison, whose executive Stephen Pickett met with top state energy regulator Michael Peevey in Poland in 2013 to secretly cook up a plan to have ratepayers pay 70 percent of the $4.7 billion cost of shuttering the broken San Onofre nuclear plant.

SDG&E’s record should weigh just as heavily as the other utilities’ pasts in any legislative solution.